


Blue Spears

by bigboobedcanuck



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Angst, Daddy Issues, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Woobie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 02:27:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/743114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigboobedcanuck/pseuds/bigboobedcanuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He knows if he'd gone home instead of back to Mexico, it might not have happened.  Lilly surely would have seen his truck in the driveway.  Maybe she would have turned around, or maybe he would have found her in the pool house instead.  Maybe his father would have watched.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>At the thought, Logan calls to the bartender, asking for a shot of tequila.  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>"Make it two."  Veronica pulls out the stool beside him.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue Spears

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting my old fic from LJ here. Hoping the stories have aged well. :)
> 
> I've always been kind of fascinated by Logan and Lilly (I love a good doomed romance), and have often wondered how Logan found out about her murder. We saw Veronica and Duncan's reactions, but never Logan's, which seems so wrong. So I ended up writing this slightly experimental ficlet from Logan's woobietastic POV. Spoilers to 122.
> 
> Memory of you is… a blue spear of flower.  
> I cannot remember the name of it.  
> Alongside a bold dripping poppy is fire and silk.  
> And they cover you.
> 
> \-- Carl Sandburg, "Two"

Logan squeezes the too-big lime wedge into the neck of the bottle before he seals it with his tongue and tips his head all the way back, forcing the lime to the bottom in a rush of frothy bubbles. He takes a gulp, and the Corona glides down his throat as the Padres score, a cheer going up from the men gathered around the big-screen TV on the other side of the room. Dingy and yellowed baseball paraphernalia decorates almost every available inch of the dark space — signed headshots, balls, bats, pennants, jerseys. Neptune is nothing if not a baseball town. 

He's alone at his end of the dark bar, where the TV is broken. When he pulled up a stool, the bartender didn't bother with small talk, only tearing himself away from the game for a few seconds to slide a bottle over and glance at Logan's fake ID. Logan's glad to know that at least a few people in this town don't watch _Tinseltown Diaries_. He takes another swig of his beer. He's not really sure why he does it — the taste of lime and _cerveza_ will always make him think of her, of that day. Of sitting in some sleazy Mexican cantina that served 50 cent tacos to go with the $1 brew; the bar stool uneven beneath him, counter sticky.

 

_He drives back from Neptune so he can't change his mind. And because he figures Dick and the Beav won't be too happy if they have to cab it home. But he doesn't feel like talking to anyone yet, so after he crosses the border again, he heads towards the water, slapping some money into a weathered old man's hand in exchange for a blanket, umbrella, and bottle._

_He drifts in and out of sleep, waking for more beer every so often. It's dark when he finally wipes the sleep from his eyes and stumbles into the nearest bar, surprised to find his wallet still in his possession._

_The hours pass, and the beer and tacos go down. An old blind woman tries to sell him a red rose, and he laughs in her face so loudly that she stumbles back, frightened._

_An old TV flickers over the bartender's head silently. It's tuned to CNN, with Spanish subtitles covering the tickertape of information along the bottom of the screen. Logan is rereading and rewriting the letter in his head in an endless loop when he glances up._

_It's the school picture she hates — the one where she's smiling sweetly, like she actually means it. The first shot the photographer had taken that day featured Lilly sticking her tongue out. In the second, she was shoving that tongue into her cheek with an accompanying hand gesture. The man had seen more than his share of Lillys over the years, and he'd just waited, bored, until she gave up and smiled the way she was supposed to for photo number three._

_Logan's bottle is halfway to his mouth and it lands on the counter with a thud, slipping out of his boneless fingers. Part of his brain registers the cold liquid spilling onto his lap, but he can't take his eyes off the TV. At the top of the screen, the headline screams "Murder in Neptune," and with the footage of the police lights at the Kane house, the shot of Jake and Celeste clutching each other, Lilly's hated picture — it's enough for him to know. More than enough._

_CNN moves onto another tragedy, and he stumbles outside, gasping for air as he vomits in the street. It's not an uncommon sight, and no one pays him any mind except for the taciturn bartender, who follows to collect payment. Logan gets up eventually, his throat dry, eyes wet and bloodshot, knees sore. He wanders towards the water as two words ricochet violently through his mind._

_Howwhyhowwhyhowwhyhowwhyhowwhyhowwhyhowwhyhowwhyhowwhy._

_Collapsed on the sand, he tries to remember what it had been like an hour ago, two hours ago, that afternoon, yesterday. He thinks of her that morning (shouldhavestayedshouldhavestayedshouldhavestayed), sunlight beaming down as she laughed and played with Veronica. It had been hot in his truck as he wrote the letter, and he kept thinking she'd look over and see him — the Xterra was hard to miss. But she didn't._

 

Logan wonders if he should have known, should have felt something when she died. Like in the movies. But he didn't.

*

Usually Logan tries not to think about before. He loses himself in videogames and booze and mindless friends. But when he least expects it, he'll remember when he still had parents, and a house, and a girlfriend with a sneaky smile who pulled him into the mop closet when she wanted to skip history class. 

There are a lot of things Logan tries not to think about. Like the night he broke one of his father's People's Choice awards, the crystal shattering into a million tiny pieces on the marble floor. He doesn't remember why he'd even picked it up off the mantle, but it had seemed important at the time.

 

 _The belt he chooses that night is adorned with a big Western buckle — a bull, maybe. He isn't able to go to school the next morning, and the welts are there for days. If he takes off his shirt in PE, even the moron stuck teaching junior high kids to shoot baskets will see. Will have to do something. But Logan fakes an ankle injury, and spends the rest of the week keeping score._

 

Maybe if he'd told that time, or a hundred other times, his father would have gone to jail. Maybe his mother and Lilly would still be alive. Maybe.

As he motions for another Corona during a break in the ball game, he tries to imagine the last time he kissed her. It had been before his party, when he'd stupidly kissed that girl — what was her name? — and everything had spun out of control. He reaches for the pretzels as the memories tumble through his mind until the right one locks into place. 

 

_Lilly climbs out of his truck, getting home way past curfew and not caring. She has one foot out when she leans back in and presses her cinnamon lips to his softly. "Bye, baby," she whispers, and then she's gone, the door closing with a slam as she skips up the driveway. He waits until she's inside being yelled at by Celeste before he leaves._

 

He closes his eyes briefly, seeing it unspool again. It wasn't the last time he saw her alive, but it's the moment he thinks about the most. If he remembers the car wash, then he has to think about his note, about sweat dripping into the small of his back as the pen scratched over paper. 

Logan knows the police never found it. No one ever did. He also knows she must have read it; there's no way she wouldn't have noticed it — Lilly noticed everything. He imagines her eyes flicking over the page, lip curling up into a sneer at his pathetic declarations. She crumples the letter into a ball, tossing it out the window on Breezeway Boulevard like a cigarette butt. 

She was all smiles when she got to his house, waiting on the bed for his father. Logan doesn't have to imagine this — he's seen the tape, after all. That it was the same bed where they'd had sex for the first time is just the icing on the cake. They were fourteen and awkward, and Logan had told her he loved her when he was inside her. Now he imagines her mind working, already thinking about who else she could fuck before they'd even finished. Or maybe she didn't, maybe she'd loved him, too. Even just for a few minutes.

His empty beer is replaced, and Logan licks the lime juice from his fingers. His mind jumps around, memories endlessly entangled. As a general rule, he tries not to think about Lilly and his father together, but the images are indelible. He'll idly remember something she said once and suddenly see the bed in the pool house, hear her moans in echoing stereo. A thought of her smile will become the crime scene video, the camera panning over Lilly's unseeing eyes and blood-red hair. 

He knows if he'd gone home instead of back to Mexico, it might not have happened. Lilly surely would have seen his truck in the driveway. Maybe she would have turned around, or maybe he would have found her in the pool house instead. Maybe his father would have watched.

At the thought, Logan calls to the bartender, asking for a shot of tequila. 

"Make it two." Veronica pulls out the stool beside him.

The bartender complies, sliding over the salt shaker and a container of lemon wedges, not bothering to check Veronica's proffered ID. Veronica nods when he suggests a Corona to chase before turning his attention back to the game. They both lick their hands, and as Logan sprinkles the salt onto their skin, he glances at her face to see if she's remembering. She might be, but he can't tell. They slam back their shots and reach for the lemons.

"So. Trial starts tomorrow," she says.

"That's what I hear." He chews on the bitter rind before tossing it back onto the counter. "How did you find me? Unless you're here for the game, of course."

"Go Padres." Her grin is wide and fake, and she gives a thumbs up. It strikes him that if Lilly were alive, Veronica might be someone else entirely. 

There's a loud groan from the baseball fans, and Logan reaches for another pretzel. Veronica seems to be waiting for him to say something, so he does. "Are you going? To court?"

"Not until I have to. What about you?"

"And steal Trina's thunder? I'll leave the tearful sound bites to her."

"But they're calling you to testify, right?"

"Yeah." He takes another gulp of beer, his throat suddenly dry. Neither of them say anything for a while, until he asks "Do you think he'll get convicted?"

He can almost feel the weight of Veronica's sigh. "No, I don't."

"Me either."

"But one day he'll get what's coming to him. He's a sick bastard."

"That he is. But so am I. Like father like son, right?"

"What? Logan...."

"I am, Veronica." He looks at her and tries to smile. "I must be, because I still love him." He can't seem to stop the words from coming out.

Her face softens. "He's your father."

"How can I? After everything he's done? I want him to go jail, I do. But I still...you know, I tried really hard not to. With Lilly, too. But I can't help it." He shakes his head and takes a swig of beer, blinking rapidly so he won't have to wipe his eyes in front of her.

"That's not a bad thing, Logan. Once you love someone, it's hard to stop."

He stares at the counter, tracing a deep gouge with his finger. "Yeah, it is."

There's nothing else left to say, and Logan clears his throat, shifting on the bar stool. His knee presses into hers, and he imagines he can feel warmth through the layers of denim. She doesn't move away.

Veronica waves to the bartender. "Two more."


End file.
